They are two ways you get customers online: you either hunt for them(outbound) or attract them (inbound).
Here are some key terms in the digital marketing world:
- Traffic: people or visitors to your website, social page, store, etc.
- Lead: a potential customer interested in a product or service.
- Convert: an action taken by a customer, e.g. buying, signing up, etc
- Organic: anything natural that doesn’t require payment.
- Target audience: A group of people likely to buy your product/service.
Outbound Marketing Methods
Outbound marketing focuses on going after people with your product; In other words, you push your product to people.
Here are examples of outbound methods to get customers online:
Sponsored Ads
Sponsored or paid ads are advertisements placed on websites, such as social media, search engines, or other websites.
Facebook is an excellent platform for running ads. It has better conversion rates than most social media platforms.
Search Engine ads or pay-per-click (PPC) typically don’t convert well. Most people don’t click search engine adverts; they prefer organic results.
Posting in social media groups
You can post your products in social media groups, e.g. Facebook and WhatsApp groups. You need to post in the right groups that are more likely to have people interested in your product. If you post randomly to a “cold audience” you won’t see much results.
Cold DMs
A cold DM is a message/email you start with a potential customer who may be interested in your product.
This method requires a lot of consistency and patience because of the many rejections and non-responses you’ll encounter. In addition, you’ll need to reach out to the right people to increase your odds of success.
Posting in marketplaces
Leverage marketplaces like Facebook Marketplace and Classifieds Zimbabwe. Post your products in these marketplaces.
Pros of Outbound marketing
- Instant results: You can generate leads quickly. You don’t wit for customers to come to you.
- Easy to setup: It’s easy to send a product or advert in groups
- Broad reach: You can reach more potential buyers who were not actively looking for your product
- Brand awareness: Outbound methods can create initial brand awareness for new businesses
- Measurable: You can measure the success of ads, e.g. cost-per-click, ROI, engagement etc.
Cons of outbound methods
- Low conversions: Ads can be annoying and may be ignored or blocked by users.
- Expensive: Ads can be expensive. You’ll need more money to reach potential customers.
- Short-lived: People stop coming once your ad ends. Your advert must run longer to see sustainable results.
- Low trust: People can be sceptical of Ads.
Inbound marketing methods
Inbound marketing focuses on attracting customers, not going after them. You do this by creating value and helping people with their problems.
Instead of selling immediately, you must educate and help people solve their problems: What are people looking for?, What are they struggling with? What are the challenges they face?
Create helpful content that answers and solves their problems, e.g. through blog posts, videos, reels, free eBooks, etc
Once you have the value, you make yourself findable. Here’s how:
Search engines
People come to search engines looking for products and answers to their questions. Create a website with content people are searching for and submit it to popular search engines like Google and Bing.
Do SEO (Search engine optimisation) to make the website rank high in searches.
Social media
Create business pages or personal brands and share educational content that helps people solve their problems. Connect with people through shared experiences. By doing this, you create trust with people because you understand their pain problems; they will want to do business with you.
Jerry’s Chattered Vendor page is a good example of a Personal Brand.
YouTube
YouTube is great for sharing videos. People use it for educational content. Create videos that educate and help and you’ll attract customers.
Groups and Forums
Join groups related to what you sell, e.g. if you sell health products, join health groups, if you offer hair services, join hair and beauty groups..
Share helpful content in those groups before selling right away. By helping first you build trust with people and they will want your products or services. Answer people’s questions or comment questions to build authority.
Pros of Inbound marketing
- Builds trust: People will trust you if you help them solve their problems instead of selling immediately.
- Brings customers automatically: People come on their own looking for solutions to their problems.
- Reduces persuasion: By providing helpful content you reduce the need to convince people to buy your things; people will believe in your products.
- Better conversion: Leads that come from inbound methods are more likely to buy.
- Longevity: Content keeps generating customers in the long run. A blog post that ranks on the first page of Google can generate customers for a long time.
- Low costs: You get free organic traffic from searches and social media without paying
Pros of Inbound marketing
- Requires effort: Creating content and ranking websites require more effort upfront.
- Takes time: Takes time to build authority. It takes time to rank websites on the first page of search engines.
Which method to use: outbound or inbound
Outbound marketing is mostly suited for quick promos, commodity-based products that typically compete on price and volume. Often with outbound marketing, you’re reaching out to a “cold audience” (people not interested in your product), thus your adverts must reach a lot of people to increase the likelihood of getting potential buyers.
Inbound, on the other hand, is more suited for services and high-priced products where you need to communicate value and build trust and authority.
You can combine both methods. For example, you can create an Ad that is not salesy but helpful and informational. This allows you to build trust with people, and you can sell later.
Ultimately, the method you use depends on the type of products you sell.
Organic vs Paid Traffic
You can get customers online for free or pay to get them. Organic traffic is the traffic you get naturally without directly paying, e.g. posting on social media is free, search engines are free.
Paid traffic comes from paying third-party platforms, e.g. Facebook sponsored ads, YouTube ads, Google ads etc.
Generally, organic traffic converts better than paid traffic, i.e. you get people more likely to buy. For example, most people prefer organic search results to sponsored ads on Google.
Conclusion
These are some of the methods to get customers online. Remember, if you want to build sustainable results online, create helpful content and build trust with people.
